Description:
This chapter critically analyses how the notion of contrasting worldviews gets used to link what people do with the way they think about each other, about themselves and the world at large. In section §1, I draw a distinction between two senses of worldview that are normally conflated in the literatures of international relations, anthropology, political science, social psychology and philosophy. Sections §2 and §3 discuss versions of a widely received hypothesis that the primary cause of sectarian conflict is lodged deep in the worldviews of the individuals embroiled in the violence and crime. Sometimes it appears vacuous, and at other times simply mistaken, to diagnose the root cause of group antagonism as the logical consequence of certain beliefs (the ‘social or ethnic identity’) constituting the core of a worldview shared by the groups’ individual members (Connor 1972; Honneth 1998, 2002; Horowitz 1998). Section §4 reviews problems with treating a worldview as an emerging property of a community rather than as an attribute of individual antagonists’ minds. In section §5 we examine the plausibility of social engineering programmes to enhance national harmony by encouraging people to build better worldviews (Connor 1972). For instance it has been argued, inanely, that a mandate of good governance is to instil in a nation-wide population the spirit of inclusiveness and a cohesive worldview through enforcement of a single national language policy (Gyekye, 1997).